


Wordpicture: Susan Ivanova

by Deannie



Series: Wordpictures [9]
Category: Babylon 5
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-07-22
Updated: 2003-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-18 08:07:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/877520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>I wanted her to know me. I wanted her to see me for all that I am--something I have not shown to anyone before. </em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wordpicture: Susan Ivanova

Expect the worst.

A typically Russian way of thinking, and one I've had pounded into my brain seemingly since birth. And yet somehow, I never could seem to get it right.  


You'd think, after the life I've had, that expecting the worst should come easily. After Mama, the war... Papa. You'd think I'd know better than to expect anything to come out right.  


But I sat there in that bar, her first week on the station, and I thought about her. A knee-jerk reaction told me to hate her, and I managed it... mostly. She was PsiCorps. She was the enemy. She and her kind had destroyed my mother, and I should never have given her a second thought, unless it was a loathing one.  


Perhaps I spent too much time around Commander Sinclair. Now there is a man who would be drummed out of Russia, if ever he saw fit to appear there. After everything he had been through with the Minbari, to strike up a relationship--and what type of relationship, I have never been quite sure--with Delenn... To show her kindness, even forgiveness of a sort...  


He is a very bad influence.  


So perhaps because of him and his optimism, I sat there and thought about her. She was attractive, in a way that few telepaths are. They all seem to have a hardness about them that makes them extremely easy to despise. She, however, was not.  


And then she was there, and I worried I'd brought her to me. Mama taught me not to broadcast--not to show myself... Not to end up like her. Talia appeared and I panicked--for a moment. But she only wished to talk. She wished to understand. And, fool that I am, I allowed it.  


I allowed Talia Winters to get inside me. She wormed her way in slowly, to be sure, and I did not give her an easy time of it. But she managed it with a gentleness I would not have expected from one of her kind. They are brutal and cold. They take what they want.  


Talia didn't. She asked. She sat and listened and felt and understood. And never once tried to break down the barriers Mama taught me to erect.  


That woman who raged and ranted in the conference room today? She is not Talia Winters. She is a construct. A weapon built by PsiCorps--built in the corpse of a woman I could have loved. A woman I nearly let inside completely.  


Mama would be ashamed of me for even thinking that, but I have. And not just last night.  


Not just when Talia lay in my bed, so close that I could have let her touch me. So close that I could feel the heat of her and smell her... and almost sense her thoughts.  


Long before that, I wanted her to know me. I wanted her to see me for all that I am--something I have not shown to anyone before. Indeed, perhaps I have never even shown it to myself.  


And perhaps there is a good reason for that. Papa taught me to expect the worst, after all.  


Maybe it is finally time I listened to him.

* * *  
The End


End file.
